Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

I've done the Courier type font in the past, but I hate the way it displays in Blogger. For reasons that will be clearer soon, I'm trying to standardize the way scripts look on the blog. I threw in another image to help make the distinction between the script and my writing clearer.

 

Harvey, I'm sure I must be repeating a question that's been asked before, but have you ever considered organizing the material on your blog into a book of your own? I know I'd buy it.

 

So, did Cushman's books print the ratings of all debut airings of all TOS episodes or only some?

 

He provides the Nielsen MNA ratings for most episodes. For others, he provides "overnight" ratings, usually from Trendex. He does not present the Nielsen National ratings (the NTI), except for the second and third episodes of season one. Many of the ratings in the book are misidentified as "Nielsen National" ratings or "Nielsen Trendex" ratings.

PM me if you want further detail.

I wrote an extensive blog post about Cushman's misuse and misunderstanding of the ratings data if you're interested.

I've been thinking about it a lot over the past year. For the moment, I'm continuing the blog, as I have a ton of research left before I'd be comfortable writing a book, and I wouldn't want to rush anything. But it's on my mind.

 

Well, FWIW, I'd buy it, too. You have put an awful lot of work into this; no reason you couldn't try to make a few bucks off it, too.

 

It's only taken two months, but I've finally finished the post I've been writing about the "production diaries" in These Are The Voyages:

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2015/05/and-on-seventh-day-conflicting.html

I've included a lot more documentation for this one than I have in the past. Hopefully, it helps make my point a little stronger, and also offers a little flavor for what the Roddenberry and Justman collections at UCLA have to offer.

I have a lot more planned for the blog in 2015, but more on that later this month.

 

The two months was worth the wait, Harvey, thank you.

Minor proofreading nitpicks...

After the production schedule pages, a couple of paragraphs below, it looks like image IMuddSlate3WM-9.jpg didn't show up, though it has a description and credit:

Near the end of the article, a few lines above the image of Kirk buried in tribbles:

But I know it was nearly midnight for you.

 

What a read, Harvey, thank you.

I'll echo what I've said previously; if you do publish something TOS related, I will be very happy to buy a copy.

 

So every production ended with a days-long orgy? No wonder they fell behind schedule!

 

I wonder why the slate image isn't showing up. I see it on my desktop and my smartphone. Hmm. Can anyone else see it?

And "sex days" was quite the embarrassing typo to wake up to. It is now fixed. There are a few other typos I will get to tonight.

 

You really should publish your own work on what you've done in this area of Star Trek production as your research methodology is top notch; and you appear to go the extra mile to double check your assumptions vs the hard evidence available from various archival sources; and not just look at a single source and draw a final conclusion.

 

Don't worry, everyone has those.


I really enjoy your work, thank you for sharing it.

 

Thanks for the kind words, all.

I'd love to write or co-write a book-length history of Star Trek, but I'm not ready for such a project yet (also, sadly, Cushman and Osborn have pretty much saturated that market).

I know a few people have been having trouble with the film clip featuring William Shatner dated 8-14-67. I re-uploaded it to Blogger and think it's working now, but can anyone confirm?

 

I see it now, Harvey, thanks.

 

I've got a lot planned for the rest of 2015, but as I've indicated on my blog, if someone has a lingering question they'd like me to try and answer using the files at UCLA (and, possibly, elsewhere in Southern California), I'm all ears.

 

This thread makes me wonder if any consideration went into casting Commodore Mendez, did they think about the issue of having different commodores appearing so soon? One thing that jumps out is that seeing Stone once more in a court-room setting would seem very much like a rehash.

 

Well, the order in which scripts would've been written back then, in an episodic series with little continuity, wouldn't necessarily have been the same as their production order. It could be that the two scripts were written with different flag officers in mind, and then, once they fell adjacent to each other in the production schedule, it was decided to set them both at Starbase 11 so that the sets and window backdrops could be reused. (Making it ironic that each episode ended up using a different matte painting of the starbase.) After all, they didn't know what order the episodes would be aired in either. They were filmed back-to-back, but "Court Martial" didn't air until more than two months after "The Menagerie."

 

Bravo, sir. I actually took the opportunity recently to share your article on the "first interracial kiss" story; it was a minor point in the discussion but yours was the first page I thought to cite.

 

Cool! Thanks!

I haven't scanned or transcribed much material about "Court Martial" or "The Menagerie," so I can only speculate at this point, but I believe that airing the two episodes so far apart was intentional -- the production didn't want Star Trek to be a courtroom show three weeks in a row. I'm not sure when it was decided to set both stories at Starbase 11, given that early scripts for "Court Martial" may have given the base a different name, but since the episodes were filmed back-to-back, it makes sense that they would just set them at the same facility and not have to re-dress a single thing between episodes.

 

^Then again, it would've been easy enough to say the starbases were standardized, keep the sets unchanged, and still change the number.